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Friday, October 1, 2010

It's our last day with The Posies and both Jon and Ken have a few parting shots. Jon's up first...

Follow the Hatful of HollowGrowing up in the small town of Bellingham, Washington during our teens in certainly had its merits – decent schools, relatively safe streets, and at least one avenue downtown all the ‘restless youth’ like ourselves could populate/troll after school everyday. Downside? Regardless of whatever potential cultural influx we might have received as a result of our proximity to Seattle and Vancouver B. C. (smack dab between the two essentially), Bellingham was still….a small town. If memory serves, even basic TV cable was threadbare and MTV wasn’t an option unless you had a satellite hookup of some kind. For me I was forced to rely on late night television on weekends for my fix of rock videos and exposure to new sounds/images. I loved staying up late and became kind of addicted to a show called “Night Flight”, a three or four hour program starting at midnight, and I wouldn’t miss it if I could.

Of the many memories I have of seeing/hearing something for the first time, few are as strong as the moment a video featuring washed-out images of smokestacks and industrial waste being released into the air appeared on the family cathode box late one Saturday night. I was completely hypnotized by the images and the music was both otherworldly and propulsive. A deep voice sang the words “I am the son….and the heir…. of a shyness that is criminally vulgar” and I was hooked. This was my introduction to “How Soon is Now?” by The Smiths.

I can’t remember if I told Ken about seeing this video or if he'd seen it as well and we were both excited by it, but I do remember that I got to Cellophane Square (our favorite used record store) first and managed to get a copy of The Smiths’ Hatful of Hollow before he did and the only copy the store had as well. Luck of the draw…

I loved the record and was thrilled to at least feel like I was somewhat ahead of the curve in possessing it, maybe even took a little pleasure in my buddy Ken’s jealousy –haha– but was also afflicted with an almost OCD-like need to keep selling and exchanging my record collection. Don’t ask me why – I still haven’t figured that one out myself. Regardless, a scant two weeks after my proud purchase, with Ken along for the afternoon I believe, I found myself back at Cellophane Square exchanging The Smith record for something else - maybe even a Scritti Politti record. Go figure.